


stuck

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Based on a Tumblr Post, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 16:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20763176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: It was swelteringly hot, her landlord wasn’t picking up her calls, and her usually absent downstairs neighbor was sitting at the bottom of her stoop, drunk, watching her struggle with the lock.Or, Robin and Strike as neighbors.





	stuck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bethanyactually](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethanyactually/gifts).

> Based on [this tumblr post](https://youcantcancelquidditch.tumblr.com/post/176535681241/the-lock-jammed-on-the-front-door-of-my-shitty)
> 
> I started writing this god knows how long ago, forgot about it, then found it again and finished it. I have a vague memory of it being prompted by a post that bethanyactually made, so it's dedicated to her for her general awesomeness. Love you, Bethany!

Robin’s flat was small, old, a bit musty, and perfect, as far as she was concerned. Finding a place to live on her own had been intimidating; she had always had someone else to rely on, her parents, her warden in uni, and then finally Matthew. But these days it was just her, mostly self-sufficient for the first time, and it had been a wild and frightening but ultimately freeing journey.

Now, of course, Robin would have cheerfully committed murder to have someone around to rely on, because her front door was stuck. Entirely unbudgeable, as she was discovering to her growing frustration. It was swelteringly hot, her landlord wasn’t picking up her calls, and her usually absent downstairs neighbor was sitting at the bottom of her stoop, drunk, watching her struggle with the lock. 

He was a big bloke, a mess of unruly tight curls above a battered face that might have been kind, might have just been a bit slack. He had a gash on his cheek and his lip was split, and Robin assumed the fresh injuries were tied to the alcohol on his breath. The addition of the drunken neighbor was compounding a frustrating situation into an untenable one.

Hanging up her mobile again, Robin spit out, “Oh, fuck this day!”

“You’re from the north,” her neighbor said conversationally. He’d stubbed out a cigarette when she’d come up the stoop, and was now playing with a lighter, flicking it on and off. 

“What?”

“You’re from the north. Yorkshire?”

“How can you tell?” Robin asked, against her will. They were stuck together for the moment, and he was her neighbor, after all. Couldn’t hurt to be friendly, even if he was drunk in the afternoon on a weekday. 

“Your vowels,” he said, making an indistinct gesture towards his own mouth. “Foock. Must’ve came out because you were angry.”

“Yeah, can’t imagine why,” Robin said. “D’you know why it’s jammed?”

“Prob’ly the weather. Wood swelled up in the humidid- humidity,” he enunciated. “Stuck in t’frame.”

“Jesus,” Robin sighed, leaning back against the door. She considered her options. Well, it had unlocked, and the handle turned; that wasn’t nothing.

“Been a day, huh,” her neighbor said, flicking his lighter again. 

“You have no idea,” Robin said. She’d had two interviews for full-time positions, and didn’t think she would be offered either, and she was feeling disgustingly damp beneath her smart jacket. 

“Broke it off with my fiancee today,” he replied, drunkenly casual. 

“Oh,” Robin said, startled. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’ be,” he said, waving a hand. “She... y’know, this.”

“She hit you?” Robin was horrified, and also worried about heatstroke. Once the sun began to set, it would cool off, but that wasn’t for a few hours yet. She dialled the landlord’s number again, just to try it. 

“She’s voli- volatile,” her neighbor said. “Always has… always was.”

“How long were you together?” Robin asked, her phone pressed stickily against her face, ringing uselessly.

“Sixteen… sixteen years? Yeah. Off and on.”

Robin didn’t know what to say to that, but she didn’t have to, because her drunken neighbor seemed ready to share some more. 

“She’s got this thing, this, this, need to be more than she is. And she’s so much already, so much, she’s got looks and money and everything anyone could want and it’s never really enough for her and there’s just no way to make her happy, not really.”

Robin draped her nice jacket over the railing-post and set herself to shoving at the door, for want of something better to do. No one was going to come along and save her, and she was in desperate need of a change of clothes. Her silky shell might not survive, but it had been a thrift-shop purchase anyway. 

At the first shove, the door gave, just a little, beneath her shoulder, and then stuck again. She was cheered by the progress, tiny though it was, and shoved again.

“You’re doing good,” her neighbor said. “That’s good pushing you’re doing.”

“Why don’t you come up and help?” Robin asked, put out that the larger man was just watching her as she struggled.

“Can’t,” he said, looking sorry, at least. “Drunk. And’ve got a bum leg.” He stuck out his leg, and Robin could see from the way the fabric of his trousers fell that what he meant was that he had a prosthetic leg.

“Oh!” she said, feeling a bit foolish, then brazening her way through her embarrassment, because she’d had no way of knowing, and there was very little chance he wanted her pity. “That’s terrible, I’m sorry.”

She channeled her feelings into her shoulder, the way her krav maga instructor had told her to, and gave the door another firm shove. It again moved, just a centimeter, and her neighbor clapped. 

It wasn’t meant to be sarcastic, she told herself, though it felt a bit insulting. But he was drunk, and bleeding from his split lip, and she found a hidden pocket of charity in her heart for him. 

“Good job,” he said, leaning on an elbow and clacking his lighter in his free hand. “You’ve got training, haven’t you.”

“Yeah,” Robin said, her teeth clenched. She’d liked the flat partially for its relatively quiet, leafy streets, lack of nosy, noisy pedestrians and yelling cabbies. What she wouldn’t give now for a passer-by with two legs and a bit of goodwill to help with this goddamn door. 

“Give’t a kick,” he said. “Try… try kicking it.”

“I don’t think it’ll do much good,” Robin said doubtfully, giving the door another shove to no effect.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

Robin sighed. “Why not, indeed,” she muttered, and backed up to give herself enough room. She was grateful for the trainers she’d brought in her bag to change into for the Tube; this would have been nearly impossible in her heels. 

Winding up, she gave the door a hard kick, and felt the impact travel up her leg in a fairly unpleasant fashion.

“I don’t think that did anything but hurt my knee,” she said. Her neighbor at least had the grace to look impressed.

“Wow. More...” he coughed. “More torque than I expected. You’ve got a surprising, uh. Torque to size ratio.”

Robin resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Thanks,” she said, “I’ll add that to my CV. Special skills: 60 words per minute, Boolean search, impressive torque-to-size ratio.”

To her surprise, he started to laugh, great big belly-laughs that seemed to startle him. Helplessly, Robin started to laugh as well. Why not?

“You’re something,” he said, wiping at his eyes with one big rough hand. “What’s your name?”

Robin hesitated, because she was raised not to talk to strangers. On the other hand, she thought, it’s not like he doesn’t know where she lives, and besides, they’re neighbors, aren’t they? 

She walked a bit stiffly down the steps to where her neighbor was sitting, extending a hand. 

“I’m Robin,” she said, declining to give a last name for the moment. No point in being foolish, was there?

“Strike,” he replied, shaking her hand with a firm grip. His palm was cool and drier than she was expecting. “Cormoran Strike.”

“That’s a lot of name,” Robin said, an eyebrow raised despite herself.

“My mum w’s’n interesting woman,” he said. “It’s good to meet the neighbors, I guess.”

Robin declined to correct his plural; she doesn’t need to make it obvious that she lives alone. 

“Yeah, I haven’t seen you much before,” Robin said instead. “Was beginning to wonder if anyone at all was in that flat.”

“I was living with—” he broke off, coughed. “Well, y’know, my ex, I suppose. And subletting. But m’subletters left a while back, ‘n I didn’t realize til I got here that uh.”

Robin waited for the drunken Strike—and what a name, _Cormoran Strike_— with careful patience. She could admit to herself that she was wondering what he was doing, sitting on her stoop in the heat.

“Uh. I haven’t paid up on the ‘lectric or water in a month or two,” Neighbor Strike finished eventually. “So it’s basic’ly a tent.”

Robin could not help it; she burst into laughter. It was a touch hysterical, but Neighbor Strike didn’t seem inclined to comment on that.

“So now you’re smoking outside, looking like the fall-man after a bout,” she said, “and I’m stuck outside because of my fucking door, and you’ve got one leg, and I’ve got a good torque-to-size ratio, and neither of us can escape this heat.”

“Sounds ‘bout right,” Neighbor Strike said, laconically, drunk and lazy and tired. 

“Have you got anywhere else you can go?” Robin asked. He can’t stay in a flat with no power or water, that’s ridiculous.

The look on Strike’s face wiped the hysteria out of her. He looked lost, a ship without a harbor, a man without a country. 

“Not really,” he said. “Not like this.”

“How about this,” Robin said, taking a deep breath and making a good faith effort to pull herself together. “If you can help me get my door open, you can stay with me until you sober up, and figure things out from there.”

The way Strike turned to look up at her knocked Robin off-balance, just a bit; he was shocked, as though the idea of a fellow human showing him goodwill was something that only happened in fairy tales. 

“I have a window unit that works well enough,” she said, for something to fill the silence, “and you should drink some water, because you’re probably dehydrating by the second out here—”

“Yeah, all right,” Strike said, hauling himself upright using the railing as leverage. He swayed for a moment, unsure as a calf on new legs, before nodding sharply. The lighter he tucks into a pocket. “I’ll help you with your door. I jus’ can’t kick it.”

“That’s fine, kicking it didn’t seem to do much good,” Robin said, relieved and shocked at her own temerity by turn. What was she doing, inviting a total stranger into her flat? Her sanctuary? Neighbor or not, she hadn’t had a man in her space since, well… ever, not since she’d signed the lease and laid claim to it. 

There was something about Neighbor Strike that she liked, though, something about the way he’d commented on her accent and noticed her krav maga training that made her feel like he respected her. 

He looked the way she’d felt, after Matthew. Lost and alone and unsure of what was going to happen. He was older than her, sure, and beat-up and big, but he had the same look in his eye that Robin recognized from her own mirror. 

_What next?_ it asked, and waited for the blow.

She had decided, between one moment and the next, that she was going to extend a hand of kindness to him instead. 

He was taking the stairs carefully, unsteady still, but standing Robin could see the size of him, the solidity he carried like armor. She watched as he looked at her door, tried the knob to find it turning easily. 

“You alright, then?” she asked, as Strike evaluated the door, took a step back, and bashed into the door with one broad shoulder. The door shuddered and moved, not quite open but progress, and Robin cheered.

Strike turned to look back at her, a grin transforming his face into something that could almost be pleasant, could nearly be handsome. There was something about him, in that moment, lip split and bloody cheek and all, that was like taking the bushel off of a candle.

He turned back to the door, giving it another bash, and then a third, and the wood protested as it gave way before him. 

“Oh, you’re my hero today,” Robin exclaimed, grabbing her jacket from the rail as she ran up the steps.

“After you,” Strike said, bowing as gesturing her through her own front door, and Robin smiled at him as she led the way into her shabby little flat, which was blessedly cooler than the outdoors. 

“Christ, what a day,” she said, dropping her bag and jacket on the little bench by the door and toeing off her trainers. “You can leave your shoes on, go ahead and sit,” she gestured to the small sitting room. “I’m going to go change, would you like some water?”

“Please,” Strike said, going in and flopping down onto her second-hand couch. It was pleasantly worn, and he heaved a sigh of satisfaction as he elevated his legs and let the aircon wash over him. “I think _you_ might be _my_ hero, Robin.”

She laughed as she went past him towards her bedroom. She was sweaty and achy and tired, she was still unemployed, but she could be her neighbor's hero. That could be what she did today, and she could call that a success. 

By the time she had changed into comfortable leggings and a tank top and poured two glasses of water, she found Cormoran Strike entirely asleep on her couch. Robin could only smile as she drained her glass. 

It wasn’t how she had thought her day would go. He was a stranger, and a dangerous-looking one at that. But he was also her neighbor, and he had been impressed by her torque-to-size ratio. That could be the basis of a friendship, right? 

Looking at Strike as he snored, Robin thought it might be.


End file.
